Note: Part of The Black Archive series, each of which is a book-length dissection of an individual Doctor Who story.

Cover blurb:'Perhaps, if that human heart breaks, the Time Lord will emerge.'

Adapted from Paul Cornell's novel, Human Nature / The Family of Blood (2007) asks what the Doctor might lose — or alternatively gain — from becoming human. The story of a 'god' who becomes mortal, or a hero on an archetypal journey, it takes Doctor Who into unaccustomed mythic territory as the Doctor's human alter ego John Smith navigates war and trauma, school and family, to unite his alien and human selves.

Naomi Jacobs is a researcher based at the University of Aberdeen. Philip Purser-Hallard is the Black Archive range editor.

THE BLACK ARCHIVE:Book-length looks at single Doctor Who stories from 1963 to the present day

"A grandly ambitious thing to attempt with something as exhaustively detailed as (Who). But they actually manage it. Treat your bookshelf."—Doctor Who Magazine